Wilting in Despair: Pilot
by psearah
Summary: It happened in surprisingly calm waves as the new replaced old every few seconds. Exhale. I could feel it whip around me, as if I were in the middle of the ocean, maybe just below the surface. Inhale. I could move your arms skyward but as close as I seemed to be, the top was unreachable. Exhale. Trapt. Inhale. Breathe. (AU: Short Pilot for upcoming series, Eventual OCxAuron.)


Scrolling, endless scrolling. That's all the internet is. You scroll through your social media pages, your e-books, scholarly journals, take a coffee break and get back to it again. It's hard to feel inspired to do much else when there's a foot of snow outside. Had I been in primary school, I would have shoveled my way through the front door, sled in hand, to the hill in my parent's backyard. Although the heat was on, a blanket and space heater were necessary. Poor circulation, like in my grandmother's long dead and amputated right leg. Scrolling involved endless joy.

I took a break from it all and leaned back in the sofa, facing the television that was playing some kind of game show. They always came out with new ones when the old ones either got too boring or too old. Many of the ones my grandmother would have remembered were cancelled years ago. Luckily, we still had Wheel of Fortune to remember her by. The channels seem to change of their own accord, switching instead to a show focusing on cops solving a particularly gruesome murder. Maybe the television had become self-aware and decided to scroll itself. I always knew it would become sentient eventually. Suddenly more aware of my surroundings and control of the electronic device of entertainment, I turned it off and let the house fall into a deeper quiet.

When I had arrived here for the first time, the house had been completely furnished with personal items from the family who had owned it. The only items of mine were my old man's recliner and a dresser. Apparently ready to be rid of it all for a while, an older lady rented the two-bedroom place for much less than what it was worth and never mentioned she would be leaving everything until the papers were already signed. Even photographs depicting multiple generations of family members were left to litter and very nearly cover the rosy wall paper. Of course I'd been hesitant to buy and there were plenty of other options at the time, but it was hard to resist a house with a history as rich as this one.

Things were easy when everything just kind of fell exactly where it needed to be, but there's always a sort of uneasiness about being stuck in the same old boring situation. A person can get everything they've ever wanted in life but as soon as they have it, they find something else to lust after, something more they want to do. Unfortunately, there's never enough time to do it all. I had my okay job working at a bakery. I lived in an old house with a history I couldn't really relate to but enjoyed imagining my own family around theirs, using their furniture and keeping their curtains cleaned. Sometimes I felt like a live-in maid, keeping the house clean while my employers were on vacation to some far-off land for an indefinite amount of time. It made me feel important to someone.

Mrs. Belem was a strange lady in the sense that she acted as though she was stuck in the 19th century, a pure southern bell with the demure accent and all. She was sweet like iced tea and just as cold. Even as she was showing me around the place, her hands were folded over themselves in front of her, occasionally gesturing towards different housing decorations or offering a story about the people in the photos. She was reserved, but insistent that I buy the house as she wasn't sure how much longer she would have it available before putting it back on sale again. I waited a week before deciding to accept her offer.

Work had been cancelled due to the heavy snow fall that was especially uncharacteristic for the southern part of Oklahoma. So, I'd been forced to stay inside for the day and maybe even tomorrow if the snow continued. No part of me wanted to be home any more than a few hours a day and cabin fever had already begun to set in when I turned the game station on. Because of a previous addiction in my earlier years my parents had left it in a box and lost[SS1] it, finding it and all my games when I was moving my things out of their house. From the moment I realized what it was, I grasped the idea that a horrible mistake had been made when they abandoned my precious technology in favor of a higher math score. Hundreds of hours lost, battles never fought, and games never finished. It does not do to dwell on the past, though. A few movements of the cords and a boss battle with a Pastafarian deity later, I had the station hooked up and ready to go. While browsing through all my old games, an unfamiliar theme started playing. As the credits rolled I saw a familiar name, _Nobuo Uematsu. _If you've ever played a Final Fantasy game, you would know that he composes all the music for the games. An admirable trait, indeed.

Pressing the start button to skip through it all, the game went through an opening sequence that made me very interested and confused. I never remembered playing Final Fantasy X, but it's very possible that I had just started playing before the world ended and that's why my middle school mind didn't retain it. True to the prediction there was a data file on the first slot memory card, but it was listed as only played for one second. With most games, you didn't even hear about save points until the end of a fourteen hour tutorial. My interest was gained and I clicked but the screen showed an error message that seemed different from the usual, and then went blue. Could a PS2 even get a blue screen of death? Isn't that a PC or Sony thing? Not wanting to marinate in the juices of the issue I pressed the restart button but no response. Panicking without really panicking, I held the button down for a second and the light on it seemed to flicker before becoming white.

_My name is Aurora Williams. Please, listen to my story. This may be our only chance to set things right, the way they should have always been. When I started this journey, I committed a crime that I will never be able apologize for. I murdered one of the only people who ever cared about me in any way without remorse, and until now without any sense of guilt of grief. But, I found a way to finally make it okay again, in one perspective or another. I need you to do what I never could, and never will be able to do. I need you to right my wrong-our wrong-once and forever._

_Whether you find this an appealing quest or not, you will help them._

**Author's Note**

Originally published on . May 30th, 2014

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this short pilot for this upcoming fanfiction. The purpose of this was to introduce the audience to the main protagonist while also allowing the audience to get a feel for my writing style. This was also published on , in an attempt to gain feedback from multiple writing environments. I would like to hold off posting regularly until there are a few reviews for this as the series is still in it's experimental stages. Don't hold back! I'm looking for constructive criticism on everything from grammar to sentence structure to story telling elements, general comments... Whatever you think is appropriate! Readers without a account will also be able to comment, so please don't be silent!


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